4.5.12

*** Sidewalk Weekend! ***

Sidewalk Rating: Pedestrian-Floral

Detroit buzzed him like coffee. The city kept sleep at bay, kept him from quiet thoughts. Half his family and most of his friends had settled here in the great migrations of the depression, when work was touch in the Carolinas and it seemed as if Henry Ford was welcoming them like brothers. But that wasn't entirely true: Papa Ford paid well, but the jobs were rough and dirty ... and dangerous. No one was offered management positions or work on the line with whites. His cousin Luke has moved up in '34 with Barnhill's Uncle Hall. Luke found a job maintaining the boilers in the Willow Run while Hal, in '37, sick of the same, joined the navy. Then the war hit. They segregated the navy, and when the men took off for war they gave the good jobs to the women. White and black girls, true, but Luke never moved out of the boiler rooms. Or the toilets.